Brad Feld

Category: Personal

On May 24th, I wrote a post titled Shifting To Maker Mode For The Summer. I had full intentions of making this shift around Memorial Day and sustaining it until Labor Day.

I have completely failed at this. While I’m managed to stay off social media and read a lot more than watch TV, I massively underestimated the amount of transactional activity I’d have this summer. On Monday mornings, when I’d look at my schedule for the week, I’d see a wall of blue through Friday, starting early in the morning and going until dinner time. My goal was to have nothing scheduled until 1 pm with an upper bound at 5 pm, but this ended up being an epic fail. And, as a bonus, I’ve had a dinner almost every night between Monday and Thursday so far this summer (that’s not a good thing.) I’ve had a few days that weren’t completely full, but they’ve ended up being catch-up days.

The next few of weeks are more of the same. So, I’ve accepted that Maker Mode is not happening this summer.

I’ve got two books in process: Give First and Startup Communities 2. I wrote 15,000 words on Give First in March but haven’t opened my Scrivener file since. I have a co-author (Ian Hathaway) work is hard at work on the first draft of Startup Communities 2, so at least he’s making progress, but I haven’t even started holding up my part of that particular bargain.

I’m am running and have committed to do the Run Crazy Horse marathon in South Dakota in October. The running has been great for my body and even better for my mental health, so that’s good.

I feel deep equanimity around this. In the past, I’d be frustrated with myself for not getting in gear. But in hindsight, it’s clear that maker mode wasn’t realistic given the other work commitments I have along with all of the episodic stuff that regularly comes up in my work life. Snoopy continues to be my guide on this particular journey.

https://youtu.be/iFNLbAs3KAU


Happy Anniversary Amy.

We’ve been together for 27 years and we’ve been married for 24 of them.

It amazes me that you put up with me.

I look forward to spending as many years together as we get on this planet. And, if we are lucky, some technology will get created before we vanish that allows us to spend infinity together, although I’m not sure I’d wish me on you for infinity.


My parents have been married for 54 years today. That’s 19,710 days. Mom / Dad – happy anniversary!

Your relationship is an inspiration to me. You have set an incredible example of a full and equal partnership that I know has deeply influenced my approach to my marriage with Amy. I also know that it has inspired many others.

Thank you. Congratulations. And Dad, it’s pretty cool to see a photo of you with hair.


An hour into dinner last night with Alex Rigopulos, he picked up his phone, tapped away at it for a few seconds, and slid it across the table to me. I then read the following:

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.”

– Island, Aldous Huxley

Alex and I have been close friends for over 20 years. I was an early angel investor in Harmonix in the mid-1990s, enjoyed the Viacom acquisition of Harmonix in 2007, watched Alex and his co-founder Eran acquire Harmonix back from Viacom in 2010, and then I invested again in the company in 2013 with my partners at Foundry Group. Throughout, we’ve had an emotionally intimate relationship that I treasure, even though we aren’t often in the same physical location.

Our conversation last night was 1% Harmonix and 99% life. I prefer this as I have plenty of time to talk about work with Alex and the team at Harmonix, but precious little time to sit quietly, with a very long-time friend, and talk about life.

The Huxley quote surfaced as we were talking about attachment, detachment, and non-attachment. Walking lightly and non-attachment are similar, so we spiraled deep into that for a while, enjoying a harmonious intertwining conversation about these concepts against the backdrop of our current life.

As I walked home from dinner for the third night in a row in the rain in Kendall Square, I barely felt my feet touching the ground.


My favorite and most productive time of the year is from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Basically, summertime.

Normally I’d declare this the Tuesday after the Memorial Day weekend but I’m just getting over a cold so fuck it, summertime starts today.

During maker mode, I try to only do meetings and phone calls in the afternoons between 1 and 5. There are some exceptions – mostly board meetings – but I try to give myself lots of space to work on the longer term stuff. While this is mostly writing, it also includes deeper work for specific companies, especially around product and product strategy. Essentially, things that take more than 30 minutes of concentration.

Last weekend Amy and I shifted into reading mode over the weekend (we were both sick so couldn’t do much other than lay on the couch, read, fall asleep, and complain about feeling crappy.) It continued into the week – the TV hasn’t been on for a while and evenings are spent on our couches with the dogs and our Kindles. Heaven.

In addition to turning off the TV, I’ve turned off all the continuous interrupts. I’m not looking at social media (although I am still broadcasting.) I’m not looking at news (I figure anything I really need to know will find its way to me) other than my continuous stream of tech news in my a Slack channel. My Sunday New York times habit will be banished until after Labor Day. Podcasts – forget it – for a while.

While I fantasize that I can be in maker mode all the time, I’ve found it incredibly difficult to sustain throughout the year. For some reason, the tempo of the summer makes it easy. Maybe it’s because the days are longer. Or it’s warmer and more people melt away. Or after 40+ years of behaving a certain way, summer is just different for me than the rest of the year.


Amazingly, I still haven’t conditioned myself to turn my phone horizontally when I take a video. I feel old.

I’m sitting in my condo downtown, drinking coffee, listening to Soundgarden, and contemplating the dissonance of so many things. I just got off a Facetime saying good morning to Amy and talking to Brooks and Cooper.

Both Chris Cornell and Roger Ailes died in the past 24 hours and I saw both alerts within 15 minutes of each other this morning.

I love Soundgarden, but I try not to listen to the lyrics too carefully. Unlike Pink Floyd, where I’ve got most of the albums memorized, I hang on to individual riffs. For me, Like Suicide is a love song, rather than an appeal for help, but it rattles me this morning as the snow comes down. I replace it in my head with all that you touch, all that you taste, all that you feel, all that you love, all that you hate, all you distrust, all you save, all that you give, all that you deal, all that you buy, beg, borrow or steal …

Things are amazing. Things are awful.

Life is complex. Dissonance abounds. And the Dude abides.

Strikes and gutters. Ups and downs.


I’m sitting up in Amy’s office on a beautiful Tuesday morning listening to the Liz Wright station Pandora. Amy is downstairs doing something with the dogs.

I just cried for a few minutes after reading Ted Rheingold’s post As I Lay DyingWhen I got to the final section, which he calls “Now,” I read it three times.

“I’ve gained some powerful emotional powers (super powers) in what I’ve been calling my second life. Most all my deep-set hangups died with my first life. A number (but not all) of my grudges, entitled expectations, self-assumed responsibilities, judgements are simply gone. I have no FOMO. There isn’t an event I’ve heard of since I’ve recovered that I wish I would have been at. I’m simply content to be alive and living my life. I have no bucket list. Life is the bucket.”

If you don’t know Ted, he now describes himself as “Beating stage 4 carcinoma thanks to amazing researchers oncologists and immunology. Passion for making the Internet do exciting and wonderful things.” I know him from an angel investment in Dogster, a company he founded and ran from 2003 to 2011 when he sold it to SAY Media. Jeff Clavier introduced us, and I think it was the first investment Jeff and I did together.

I haven’t kept up with Ted other than a periodic email. But whenever I see his name, I think of him fondly. While Dogster was an ok outcome (I think I got a modest return – maybe 2x), Ted worked his butt off, valued his early investors, and was a delight to engage with him. But that doesn’t matter, as it’s not what is important about this thing we call life.

Ted touched me profoundly today with this post. His clarity around his second life is intensely powerful. The statement, “I’m simply content to be alive and living my life.” is something that vibrates in my brain.

Ted is getting a phone call from me to say thank you for putting this out there. And to send him a hug over the phone lines. Ted – thank you for saying “Life IS the bucket …”


Amy and I just took a two-week vacation. We were mostly off the grid, to the extent we could be given several things we were working on together. We hid from the world, caught our breath, and regrouped.

I often get asked what my rhythm is on a vacation like this. It’s simple – I have no rhythm or schedule. My days are organized around waking up when I feel like it and going to bed when I’m tired. When I look at my Fitbit sleep data, I got at least nine hours of sleep every day. My resting heart rate was 62 at the beginning of the month (down from 69 when I declared a travel moratorium) and is 57 today.

I do have a few things I do each day. I meditate first thing for 20 minutes. Amy and I three meals together. I exercise, which on this trip included ramping up my running nicely. I take an afternoon nap. And I try to read at least once book a day.

We have a few friends living near where we are hiding so we have had some fun dinners together. We went and saw the movie Logan in the middle of the day and walked around a shopping mall for a few hours. We thought about going to a sporting event but never managed to pull it off. And we’ve watched zero TV.

Usually, we take a week off the grid each quarter. This time I felt like I needed more, so we took two weeks. I’m glad I did.


All That We Share

Feb 05, 2017
Category Personal

In our very divided world right now, this video is worth three minutes of your life on this Super Bowl Sunday.